Earlier quoted context omitted.
same day is different than 1 hour. not to mention, you cannot order perishables from Amazon.
http://fresh.amazon.com
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Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
31–40 of 106 posts
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#32I've been using instacart a lot lately and it's awesome. I really think this is going to big.
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#33[deleted]
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#34I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful! That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.…
While I agree that a lot of smart people have tried this before (Kozmo.com, WebVan, etc), I believe that there are significant differences in the approach that we are taking. Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits. Having that mentality from day one allowed them to make huge concessions to users such as give them free delivery on everything, and not have a minimum ord…
Thanks for cloning Get It Now after using it. ;)
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, Amazon, but within 1 hour. No need to overcomplicate things.
Well, except they sell only groceries, which isn't at all Amazon's core business (and isn't what Amazon does, in 99.9% of the world).
And they do their own delivery. It's nothing at all like Amazon, except perhaps for the user.
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#36I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful! That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.…
While I agree that a lot of smart people have tried this before (Kozmo.com, WebVan, etc), I believe that there are significant differences in the approach that we are taking. Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits. Having that mentality from day one allowed them to make huge concessions to users such as give them free delivery on everything, and not have a minimum ord…
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Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#37I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful! That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.…
While I agree that a lot of smart people have tried this before (Kozmo.com, WebVan, etc), I believe that there are significant differences in the approach that we are taking. Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits. Having that mentality from day one allowed them to make huge concessions to users such as give them free delivery on everything, and not have a minimum ord…
apoorvamehta: thank you for your prompt, articulate response.
The logistical challenges look daunting to me. My recollection is that the problem of coordinating and optimizing deliveries in such a point-to-point system with time constraints is NP-hard (I could be wrong about this, but that's my recollection). Then one has to deal with all sorts of real-world problems like order-fulfillment errors and substitutions (intentional and otherwise), constant shrinkage of merchandise, etc.
Obviously there's some price at which the service can be profitable, but I'm not sure it's $4. (Consider that the former CTO of Kozmo, Chris Siragusa, has been running a one-hour, point-to-point $3 delivery service for a number of years, MaxDelivery.com, but he has kept the service restricted to a relatively small, dense area in lower Manhattan, making the economics worthwhile.)
In any case, I sure hope you're right!
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#38I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful! That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.…
While I agree that a lot of smart people have tried this before (Kozmo.com, WebVan, etc), I believe that there are significant differences in the approach that we are taking. Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits. Having that mentality from day one allowed them to make huge concessions to users such as give them free delivery on everything, and not have a minimum ord…
So does that mean you view yourselves as potential competitors for services like Safeway's home grocery delivery?
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#39I'd love to have this service at home, so I'm (selfishly) hoping Instacart becomes hugely successful! That said, I can't help but wonder whether the company will find a business model with sustainable economics. A lot of really smart people have tried and failed to accomplish this sort of thing before. For example, Amazon invested $60 million in Kozmo.com back in the late 90's, and they couldn't make it work. (Kozmo.…
While I agree that a lot of smart people have tried this before (Kozmo.com, WebVan, etc), I believe that there are significant differences in the approach that we are taking. Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits. Having that mentality from day one allowed them to make huge concessions to users such as give them free delivery on everything, and not have a minimum ord…
> Specifically, Kozmo.com was founded in an era where you could IPO without having profits
Yes, it's different this time. Just ask Groupon.
Also, and maybe you have a lot more insight into the business model than I do, but I just do not see how this scales, as your marginal labor costs have got to be a very high portion of your revenues. How many deliveries per hour can an employee handle?
For example, assume you are paying $8.00/hr. If you have one person shopping, and they can compile 4 orders per hour, and one person can deliver those, which is a big if, you are just breaking even on labor costs.
Re: Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery
#40I have been using past few week while it was in Alpha and I got say, its my favorite service for drink runs like sodas/juices/liquors. Def going to become a regular user. Gonna be following with much interest.
Also, to add to the conversation.It all about timing, right? Now with Amazon being as big as it is and we see companies like Rewinery, Exec, Postmates smashing into this on-demand local delivery space. The time seems ideal for a company like Instacart. I do miss WebVan though.